Moment of Truth

Francesco Rosi, who directed Moment of Truth, makes films with a message, and in this film the message arrives in the very first scene. A funeral procession cuts its way through the streets of a small Spanish village with a huge, elaborately decorated altar in the middle of the procession. Rosi's camera, plays upon the decorations of the altar and the placid smile on a statue of the Virgin Mary and then tilts downward to the miserable peasant boys who must carry the altar on their shoulders. Throughout the film, trappings constantly give way to sordid details in this way.

The Hero

The hero of the film, Miguelin, played by an actual matador named Miguelin, rises from poverty to become a famous bullfighter. Although the outward circumstances of his life seem to change for the better, Rosi continually insinuates that they don't. The impressario who grabs a fat chunk of Miguelin's salary as a matador closely resembles the labor contractor he worked for in the slums of Barcelona. Similarly, whores with diamond earrings are no different from the 100 pesatas per night girls he met while still a dock worker. Rosi carries these parallels to extremes; even the jet-set types at elegant after-parties wolf their food the same way Miguelin's boorish father did on the farm.

Miguelin himself does change, however, as fear sets in. Hemingway once remarked that the true test of a bull-fighter comes after his first major wound. The natural matador will concentrate harder when he returns to the circuit, while the man out for money alone will lose his nerve. Once wounded, Miguelin begins to suffer from dreams and fantasies of death. The camera, which before had recorded the full spectacle of the bull-fight from a discreet distance, focuses directly on Miguelin and the bull as, for the first time, he realizes that he and the beast are alone in the ring.

The depiction of this shift in Miguelin's psyche comes slowly and subtlely, in contrast with the incomparable boldness which Rosi exercises in the style of this film. Amazingly abrupt shifts of scene, striking colors, and entirely straightforward dialogue often make you wonder how the director manages to maintain the dramatic interest to well.

Candid Camera

His secret Yes in his semi-documentary technique, his legacy from the post-war Italian neo-realist film-makers, coupled with Rosi's own sensitivity to detail. During the bullring scenes particularly, Rosi's skillful use of faces in the crowd provides a visual comment on the action which raises the film far above the newsreel level. Or, is another instance, Rosi places Miguelin outside the Madrid ring selling souvenirs and records the scens when a policeman, unaware that he was on candid camera, chases the poor boy away.

Rosi's contrasts between the actual and the staged shots parallels the central contrast of the film, that between the public image of a matador and the man who fights bulls for a living. This device is largely responsible for the effectiveness of the scenes in the ring; because so much of the film is not staged, you can never be sure that Miguelin will not be actually gored at any moment.

Thorough Disgust?

Critics have contended that Rosi's message in Moment of Truth amounts to a thorough disgust with bullfighting. I, for one, think his target is more specific. Rosi is clearly enraptured with the gracefulness of the sport, and he takes pains to elaborate on the courage of Miguelin which allows him to rise above the other would-be matadors. Rosi also seems to enjoy the ritual which goes along with every bullfight and which accounts for the extraordinary beauty of his film.

Rosi is foremost a social critic, and I believe that modern bullfighting for him serves as one example of a malaise which he observes in present-day society. The thrust of his film is directed not against bullfighting per se, as evidenced by his highly sympathetic portrayal of an idealistic old matador, but against the kind of professionalism which Miguelin represents.

Miguelin, as any aficionado knows, is a gimmicky bullfighter. His moves in the ring all attempt to place the bull in a situation where Miguelin can execute one of his two favorite tricks, that of patting the bull on the head and that of executing passes at close range while seated on the ring barrier. This kind of stereotyped strategy may please a sensation-seeking crowd, but it is not the art that bullfighting can be. The old-style matador, by contrast, constantly innovated to suit the particular bull he was fighting.

Attacking Horatio Alger

Rosi, in other words, is attacking the Horatio Alger type of matador like Miguelin. Such a matador enters the ring for the first time late in adolescence and proceeds to tailor his style to the crowd. He has not grown up on a bull farm and he has little knowledge of the animal he must fight. Thus when the first wound comes, there is only the threat of the poorhouse to sustain him in the ordeal of his comeback.

Rosi, then, is doing battle with pretension in Moment of Truth, the pretension which has made the ritual hollow and which allows such men as Miguelia into the bullring only to meet their tragic end. The candor and the earnestness which the director brings to the film perfectly counter-points his basic message. The elemental power which he achieves will very likely make you an aficionado of Francesco Rosi, if not of bullfighting itself.